As I am getting near to the end of Adler's Grammar - and my speed at marking up the text is increasing, I am looking forward to my next project, connected with providing online audio resources for someone wishing to become fluent . And so, with an eye on the next step in developing my Latinity, I have started to make preparations for phase II:

Latinumâ€™s Comenius Project

Project Outline August 2008

John Amos Comenius ( March 28, 1592 â€“ November 15, 1670) was a European Educator, who wrote an important series of school textbooks. These were textbooks covering the complete curriculum, as Comenius conceived of it. His view was that an education should be both universal and encyclopaedic. The textbooks were written in Latin, and come in a gradated series. The aim of these textbooks was to get the students to become fluent in Latin, as school was taught in Latin - but the textbooks were not LATIN textbooks, but general schoolbooks, covering the subjects we now recognise as history, politics, the sciences, &c.

As such, these books are of enormous utility to the student of Latin, as they cover areas of knowledge with which we are somewhat familiar, and they provide a wealth of vocabulary, and knowledge about real things in the world â€“ while at the same time giving us an insight into the mindset of the Renaissance, in a manner that no amount of academic study can give us â€“ for by studying the course outlined by these textbooks, we become one of Comeniusâ€™ students, and are transported back in time. At the same time, we build up and strengthen our Latin.

Comenius' textbooks were very famous, and some editions remained in active classroom use until the early 1800's. Most editions are bilingual (Latin plus some other European language, including Hebrew and Classical Greek), some are trilingual or more, with the text running in parallel columns.

The Magna Didactica

LEVEL ONE

The first text Latinum will present will be Comeniusâ€™ Orbis Sensualim Pictus.
We will use the first American edition, in English and Latin, as this is available on Google Books.

This book is Comenius' foundation textbook, and it covers in a very basic format, all the main areas of knowledge as they were understood in the seventeenth century â€“ biology, physics, geometry, trades, philosophy, music, recreation, law, politics, etc. This book was written for six to seven year olds, but it serves quite well for adults as well, although each topic is of course only treated in the barest of outlines.

Each lesson is an â€˜object lessonâ€™, and all the words given are illustrated in drawings that accompany the lesson, aiding in memory and understanding. The lessons are interesting historically, as they describe the processes of long extinct trades, adding to your store of Latin words related to everyday life.

In order to progress to Comeniusâ€™ higher level textbooks, it is necessary to master the vocabulary in the Orbis Pictus â€“ and going through the book seven or eight times will be necessary â€“ possibly more. The Orbis will give you a vocabulary of a few thousand words. Once I have marked the text up for quantity, I will record it.

The next text in Comeniusâ€™ series is the Vestibulum to the Janua Linguarum. This is a very rare text, and no online version of it is available that I am able to access. I have not been able to locate an antique copy either - and even were I to do so, the probable outlay of over Â£1500 prohibits. If some kind soul finds a copy and buys it for me as a present, I would be most pleased!
In the absence of this text, I will use 1796 text of Johann Georg Lederer: Der Kleine Lateiner. This text follows the outline of the Orbis Pictus very closely, while introducing some material some material from the Janua, and thus serves admirably as the â€˜next step upâ€™. This text is in German and Latin.

LEVEL THREE

The Janua Linguarum Reserata Aurea uses the same chapter outlines as the Orbis Sensualim Pictus, but the material is fleshed out in much more detail. The edition I currently have located is in Latin, Classical Greek, and French. I have also purchased a copy of the critical edition, which is a synoptic edition drawn from five editions of this work. Copies of the Janua Linguarum can be viewed as scans at the Comenius Library in Japan. The texts of the Janua are available in a variety of languages - Latin + French + Italian + German + Greek + various Eastern European languages.
http://www.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub/tree/comenius.php

LEVEL FOUR

This section will be the delightful book called Schola Ludus, where the material of the Janua Linguarum Reserata is presented in short dialogues and â€˜playsâ€™ â€“ although these are not dramatic plays, but rather expositions, using conversation. They are, to my mind, reminiscent of a modern radio talk-show or documentary programme. These 'theatrical presentations' develop the educational themes in the Janua in more depth. This text is available online as individual photographs of the pages, and can be found at the Japanese archive of Comenius texts as well.
http://www.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub/tree/comenius.php

LEVEL FIVE

The Atrium.
If I ever complete the project to this point, I will record what survives of Comenius' Atrium.
Comenius also produced a students' Latino-Latinum dictionary as part of his grand project. If this were ever reprinted, it would be a great service as no such dictionary exists in print at present.

Looks very interesting. I was actually just reading through Orbis pictus the other day in the library. I was unaware he had these other textbooks. I will try to look into finding the second volume and making scans of it somewhere.

What structure do you envision your lessons taking? Are they to be recorded as now?

I simply plan to record the Latin, to listen to while you read along - especially with the Orbis, this is useful, as so many parallel translations exist in so many languages. So, the format will be somewhat different to the Adler lessons.

With the Janua, I will do the same thing - simply read the text.

My work will consist mainly of marking up the texts for quantity before recording.

It will be a different type of project to Adler, which I have recorded with a very intensive methodology.

I am assuming the student will have completed the Adler course before they try to tackle Comenius - although even a raw beginner could follow along with Comenius, and learn quite a lot simply through immersion and intuition.

The Schola Ludus will be in Latin only. There are some translations of it around - in Czech, and perhaps in German. Not sure if it has been translated into English.

The other text by Comenius I want to see in print is his lexicon Latino-Latinum Atriale.
I have written to a museum in the Czech republic that holds a copy, asking for a scan to be made for me. Hopefully I will get one.
.
Evan.

That coloured version has a lot of textual changes. Later on, it includes electricity, and also steam trains.
It is missing lots of things as well. I verily think you have spotted a laptop, circa 1880.
Excellent.

I will be using restored calssical - this is post-Erasmus, and he advocated this pronunciation, so it was already beginning to make inroads at this time in certain circles. Truth be told, I have no compuntctions about reading even a mediaeval text in Restored Classical.

One option is to work on the images in photoshop, then upload them to lulu.com to print as a comic book, with the pages with pictures in colour.

This is what I plan to do, and then it will become available for anyone.

One concern, is that the Japanese scans are not really of high enough
resolution.

However, they are responsive to suggestions - some of the pages on their scan of schola ludus were mucked up, and I wrote to them, and they corrected the problem.

They also put together that special page with all the comenius stuff with scans in one lion for me....very helpful people indeed.

AND Google Chrome is doing funny things to this text box as I write in it - I get ghost letters.
Odd.

I have now acquired a copy of the critical edition of Comenius' Janua Linguarum, and also a critical edition of the Schola Ludus.
Both these books are enjoyable (for me, at any rate) to read, I in particular like Schola Ludus.

Thre is a scan of the janua linguarum on the internet archive, with a Greek parallel text.
However, this is a poor scan, and much of the Latin (left column) and French (right column) is truncated. However, the Greek, in the centre, is not.
I think there is also a version of this on the tulips site (the Japanese Univesity site linked above), that is complete.

I've not yet seen the Classical Greek, Hebrew and Turkish editions of the Orbis. Apparently they do exist. There are also versions in Italian, Russian, Hungarian, etc. I expect as google books keeps expanding, they will pop into cyberspace.

Yes, this is the version I referred to. You found it!
There are also a few variant texts of the Orbis on the internet archive.
It is quite a famous translation into Classical Greek. There is a different scan of the same text on the tulips site, not as a pdf, but as photographs of the pages.
It is typeset very beautifully in the Greek.
Evan.

which is pretty close toâ€˜swet w Obrazychâ€™. But whether Comenii â€˜Bohemianâ€™ is closer to Czech or Slovak Iâ€™ve no idea. All three - Czech, Slovak and Polish â€“ belong to the same West Slavic family.

A professor at a university in the USA has located a copy of the Vestibulum for me, which I now have in digitaql form.
It is similar to the Orbis Sensualim Pictus, but one tiny step further up the ladder.
. The advantage of all these texts, is that they teach the same subject matter, simply each subsequent level expands a bit more on what was learned in the earlier text.

metrodorus wrote:A professor at a university in the USA has located a copy of the Vestibulum for me, which I now have in digitaql form.It is similar to the Orbis Sensualim Pictus, but one tiny step further up the ladder.

Cool! Will you be able to share these scans or are you prohibited from doing so?

The Vestibulum is not a very long text. I'm not sure where the original came from. If it was from EEBO then it can't be republished, but the text is short enough to type out, which I could easily do.
All the other Comenius texts I will eventually use,
are available online in one form or another.

Their basic concept and presentational/pedagogical skills are so good and their Latin skills so abysmal (translation howlers galore!) that someone really should help them get their linguistic act together. O tempora O mores. So long as it LOOKS good, who cares â€¦? But learners who already know A LITTLE real Latin can gain A LOT from this site.

Hello,
Pleased you're enjoying my readings. They're better now than they used to be, that's the effect of a few hundred hours in front of a microphone, reading Latin.

The edition of the Kleine Lateiner has a vocabulary list at the end of each chapter, with the quantities of most of the words used in the Orbis. Some care is needed, as ideas about quantity have changed a little over time, but I generally use that. Also, one of the editions of the Orbis on the Japanese site has a word list along with each page, giving quantities, and also the full grammatical forms of each word - quite useful.

I am surprised by the enthusiastic reception Comenius is getting - I thought this would just be a little obsession of mine - but apparently Comenius remains as popular as ever.

Interaxus - if you google in google images for the Orbis Pictus, many more pictures come up from editions that do not have scans on google books. Some of these pictures are really pretty. Part of the appeal for me, is the artwork.
Evan.

I have put the first part of the Vestibulum online. It is not a very long text, but I am only working on it fitfully.

There is a Latin-English section, and then a Latin only.

This is a simple text, and would be suitable for teaching to children (It was written for 5-6 year olds)

It introduced a lot of vocabulary and basic concepts about the world.

I have removed by first recordings of the Orbis - one or two errors of quantity - I will re-record these. There will, inevitably, be the odd slip up - just point them out to me, and if I deem them serious enough, I will re-record the offending episode.